


Occupational Hazards

by Thalius



Series: Undercover Operations [3]
Category: Halo (Video Games) & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, Huddling For Warmth, Sharing a Bed, Undercover Missions, they do the thing where they say the title of the fic in the story too, what more could you ask for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-22 06:13:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13160955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thalius/pseuds/Thalius
Summary: Fred and Veta are finally assigned their first undercover mission, but their home base leaves alotto be desired.





	Occupational Hazards

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in the same (slightly AU) universe as [A Civilian Matter](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7590907) and [Social Integration Fieldwork](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12601640). Basically a set-up to get Fred and Veta a-snuggling
> 
> I’m sorry what was that? Huddling for warmth is an overused trope you say? I say I can’t read suddenly and don’t know what you’re talking about

As hideouts went, the one they’d been assigned was… well, she’d slept on nicer floors.

Shoved into the side of an abandoned quarry’s cliff face on a planet that had long been sapped of its natural resources, the heavy door of their safe house opened to a shack that was more cave than building. Veta’s head just cleared the frame as she walked in; Fred had to hunch most of his upper body to fit through the door, and the interior wasn’t much higher. “Terrific,” he said under his breath, and she gave him a sympathetic look.

“Most hideouts aren’t built for Spartans, unfortunately.” She reached up and touched the support beams on the ceilings above them, rapping her knuckles on the old steel. “Stable, at least,” she said, mostly for her own benefit. It was dark and dank and cold, and that combination always made her especially uneasy.

“And this is homebase for the next four months?” Fred asked, moving further into the shack. It went deeper into the cliff than she’d originally assumed; she saw Fred walk far back enough into the hideout that his outline became a vague shape in the musty shadows, and she activated the small lamp strapped her to pack’s shoulder to see better. What it illuminated did nothing to improve her initial impressions of the place; the centre of the single room had a divot in the very middle of the floor where an electric heater was sitting dormant, which was ringed by two lonely-looking fold out chairs and a small table that held a mobile cooker and a kettle. At the very back were two cots with a moth-eaten rug between them, and their small size meant that Fred would have to get creative with his sleeping positions. The only other piece of furniture in the place was a cabinet for them to store their things, and a steel counter to house their weapons and ammo.

“Maybe it’ll get blown up,” Veta said hopefully. “And we’ll get a newer one. With higher ceilings.”

Fred opened the small door beside their beds that lead to a bathroom, presumably checking for monsters. “Maybe,” he said over his shoulder, distaste evident in his voice.

She left him to check out the cabin for any flaws or vulnerabilities as she dumped her pack onto the steel counter by the wall and unloaded their supplies. It was mostly food and ammunition, but she set about confirming that they still had everything on the list and began dividing up their meals. Combined with the supplies in Fred’s pack, they had enough food for three weeks, and ample ammo for a few hours of continuous fire. The food was a bit overkill; she didn’t think—didn’t _hope_ —they’d actually be holed up here for that long before they’d be able to venture out for more supplies. But it paid to be prepared.

“Can you start up the heater?” she asked, seeing Fred pace around the perimeter of the hideout, his long arms splayed above him on the support beams to keep from slamming his body into the ceiling. She found the activation for the lighting in this place and flipped it on. Naked bulbs burst on, flooding the room with patchy, yellow light, and she shut off her lamp.

Fred squinted. “Aye.” He crouched down in the centre of the room and pulled up the heater’s interface, tapping away at the startup UI and grateful for an excuse to stop standing.

Veta relieved him of his own backpack and put away their things, and she slipped on an extra layer of clothing under her jacket in the process. The initial briefing for this hideout said it got pretty damn cold at night. They’d arrived just before sundown, and she was already freezing.

She unearthed a few packets of instant soup and turned to wave them at Fred. “Hungry?”

His nodded, not looking up from the heater. The knot in his brow instantly made her wary. “Something wrong?”

“The unit is old,” he replied. “Very old. Might take a while to start up.”

It was her turn to mutter under her breath. “I’ll boil some water while we wait.”

The kettle wasn’t ancient, thankfully, and they had access to a spigot with an artificial well in the bathroom, so they could save their bottled water for expeditions outside. She made a point of noting any positives to this place. Perhaps she’d begin a list they could add to as the days would inevitably drag on and make them stir-crazy. She’d seen the Gammas with cabin fever, and although Fred wasn’t three bored teenage supersoldiers, she knew all of them struggled with long periods of inaction.

Veta set out two cups beside the kettle and dumped the soup packets in. “We can look over all the mission files now that we’ve secured this hideout,” she said over her shoulder, seeing Fred still fiddling with the heater. “And then we should get some sleep. Not much else to do.”

“Affirmative.” He finally looked up at her, a small smile on his face. “Do you like word games, Inspector?”

A surprised laugh escaped her at the question. “Word games?”

He nodded. “We play them a lot—Spartans, I mean—whenever we have to hunker down and wait for orders or a target to get within range. Might help with the boredom.”

“Huh.” She heard the kettle click off, signalling that water had been boiled, and she poured a level amount into each cup. “What else do you guys do for fun?”

Fred stood up—as well as he could, at least—and stepped up beside her, grabbing a cup for himself. “Play cards, board games, tell stories, sparring—though there’s not much room for that in here.”

“I doubt we’d be able to do much sparring anyway.” She sat down in one of the seats by the heater and took a sip of the soup. It was better than she was expecting, and she inhaled the scent of the pungent spices with a sense of renewed vigor. “But I packed cards and some molding clay to keep ourselves busy.”

“Made figurines out of glass sometimes,” Fred added, testing the integrity of his own seat with a press of his hand. It didn’t groan or wobble too much, so he eased himself into it. “But that’s more difficult. Too focus-intensive.”

“What kind of figurines?” She was bewildered by his sudden outpouring of personal information, but then she supposed she’d gone through the same with her Gammas. They’d been pretty tight-lipped about themselves for the first few weeks they’d been reassigned to her, and then one day it’d been as if a switch had been flipped and they’d suddenly included her in their jokes and stories and invited her into their lives.

Fred sipped his soup. “Anything that was on hand to use as a reference, really. Trees, wildlife, Covenant, armour.” He pulled out a commpad from his pants pocket and expanded the view, pulling up the briefing for their targets. She did the same and made a quick scan of the opening report.

“Insurrectionist cell making a deal with pirates in this system,” he murmured, then gave her a look under long lashes. “Sounds like something your Ferrets could more than handle.”

“They’re off training,” she replied.

“So you said.”

“A Gao woman with three buff teenagers isn’t exactly an everyday sight. If I don’t rotate the Ferret roster every now and again, people would start to notice a pattern. There are a lot of criminals in the galaxy, but not so many that I can’t worry about blowing cover.” She nudged his foot with a boot, and he raised a brow at her. “So right now, you’re my only Ferret. Well, FIT.”

“FIT?”

“Ferret in training. We can continue to work on speech and body language and cover stories while we wait here for this terrorist cell to pass into this system, too.”

He shrugged and took another sip of his soup. “Whatever works, Inspector.”

“Veta,” she corrected.

“What?”

“A big difference between civilians and military personnel,” she explained, “Is that civilians aren’t so formal. So get in the habit of calling me Veta. Or Lopis, at the very least. Veta is better, though.”

“Veta,” he said back to her, then shook his head. “Alright.”

“You call Blue Team by their first names. The Gammas, too.”

“That’s different.” He finished his soup and reached over to set his cup down on the table. “And it’s the only name they have.”

Well, she wasn’t sure about that. Being assigned Spartans to her black-ops team meant she had access to their files. A lot of it was still classified above her pay grade, but she had enough to know Mark, Ash and Olivia’s old last names. Fred’s, too, which surprised her. She wasn’t sure what Osman was playing at by giving her access to that specific tidbit of personal information. Perhaps it was to help Veta think of him as something other than a Spartan while they were undercover. All it did was give her a headache if she thought about why his last name had been replaced with a numeral for too long. And she didn’t need any help mentally humanizing Fred from Ms. Classified, anyway. He’d already given her more than enough evidence that he wasn’t the unfeeling robot the rest of the galaxy thought he was.

“Insp—Veta,” he said, and she realised she was staring cross-eyed at him.

“Yes, sorry. Well,” she hummed, looking at the heater and frowning at how cold the room still was. “It’s something you can practice while we’re here.”

“As you said.”

“It’s worth repeating.” She stood up and brought the heater’s UI towards her, looking at the green status symbol it was blinking at her in disapproval. “You’re right. This thing is old. And slow.”

“Readout says it’ll be well below zero tonight.” He looked up at the support beams. “We should section off the room to keep the heat contained. Towards the cots,” he added, looking behind him at their abysmal excuse of a bedroom. “And move the heater to the back.”

“Then what are you waiting for?” She stood up and grabbed a tarp from the cabinet, wagging it in his direction. “I’m freezing.”

* * *

With the issue of freezing to death somewhat dealt with, they both discovered additional compounding factors that would make their stay here monumentally uncomfortable, the most pressing being that Fred could only fit head-to-hip in his cot.

She rubbed her hands together and suppressed a smile looking at him. His legs were hanging over the frame at the foot of his bed, and he had enough space left to plant his feet firmly on the ground. His arm was thrown over his face to shield his eyes from the light that was only on for her benefit, and the only thing visible was the thin, disapproving line of his mouth below his jacket sleeve.

“I can sleep on the floor,” he muttered, heaving a sigh. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“You’d figure the UNSC would learn to accommodate for all the giants in their employ by now.”

“You’d figure,” he repeated. His voice was calm and quiet, and if she looked away, she wouldn’t have been able to guess he was at all annoyed. But he was putting on an unusually dramatic physical display, and she didn’t know whether to be amused or worried. He was pretty out of his element, but Spartans were used to uncomfortable and dangerous conditions, weren’t they?

While she ruminated on that, Veta grabbed the mattress from her own cot and pulled it down onto the ground. That made Fred peak out from under his arm, and a solitary blue-green eye observed her. “You could probably fit on yours,” he said, confused.

“I take up less space, yes,” she agreed. “So you can sleep diagonally across these if we put them together. Your feet—and your shins,” she added, looking at his massive, long legs, “will probably still hang off, but it’ll solve some of your problems. And I doubt the cots would stay together if we pushed them close.” Not with his weight, at least.

He frowned and sat up, looking at the wiry, exposed frame of her bed and then down at his own mattress. “So you’ll sleep curled up in a ball?”

She shrugged. “More or less. We can figure out the logistics later. Also—”

“What?”

“It’s still really cold,” she said, looking back at the tarp hanging as a barrier between them and the rest of the room. The heater was whirring away at the head of their beds, but its effective radius was still woefully small, and she still needed several layers of clothes to keep from constantly shivering—and even then it was a near thing. “I’d rather not freeze to death the first night here. Or at all, actually.”

“So you want to sleep together,” he concluded. There was no hint of innuendo in his voice, but he gave her a ghost of a smirk that nonetheless made her face pinken.

“That’s the plan, Fred. Unless you have a better idea?”

He shrugged. “You’re the boss, Inspector.”

“Veta,” she muttered. “Now get up and help me move this.”

He stood up and did as ordered, shoving their cots together on the ground and piling their sheets on top. They had aluminized blankets that would serve to insulate their body heat, and she figured that by the time the heater finally reached full strength, they wouldn’t need to worry about cold nights. But Fred’s height would still be a problem, so they may as well get used to it.

“Keep your boots and gloves on,” she told him, lifting up the layers of blankets and sliding under them. The aluminium blanket crinkled with her shuffling. “Getting a little hot is better than being cold.”

“This may surprise you, Lopis,” he said, sliding in beside her. “But I have done this before.”

Well, it was an improvement from Inspector, at least. “Huddling together or sleeping on the floor of a cave?”

“Both,” he replied, lying down and spreading his height out across the two mattresses as much as possible. He had to tuck his feet and calves in, but it was a better fit than the bedframe had been. “Though I’ll admit sleeping with an ONI agent is new for me.”

“Yeah well, I’m not thrilled about it either.” About two-thirds of her body could lie out normally, but Fred’s knees got in the way of her shins, so she curled into a loose ball.

“Never said that,” he said, staring up at the ceiling and deactivating the lights with a press of a button on his watch.

She looked over at the outline of his face, the only thing she could see now. “Didn’t know you were such a flirt, Fred.”

“You can learn a lot in that Ferret training course you sent me to.”

“So this is just you kissing up to the boss, then.”

She felt him shrug. His shoulder brushed hers with the movement. “If that’s what you want to call it.”

She couldn’t damn well see his face, but no doubt he could see hers. There was no way to gauge body language either, and she’d gotten pretty good at reading that with all the time she spent with the Gammas. The only thing she could feel for was the tone of his voice, which was as calm and collected as it usually was.

“Could’ve just asked me out for dinner,” she finally responded, trying to sound just as relaxed as he did. “That’s usually how this works.” Not that she was an expert either, but still.

She heard the thin material of his pillow ruffle as his head moved, and though she couldn’t properly see his face, she could feel him looking at her. “This fits better with my schedule,” he replied, and a note of amusement leaked into his voice with his words. She could imagine the line of his mouth curling upwards in a smile and blinked the image away.

She wasn’t sure if now was a good time to ask if it would be okay to move closer. The blankets did a lot to keep the heat in, but her extremities were still cold, and the wet chill of the cave was dredging up memories that she’d rather not bring into her dreams. She did not want to have to explain to Fred why she was waking up screaming the next morning, and the less noise they made in general, the better.

Besides, he felt warm and comforting being so close already, and in a place that was anything but, it was a little intoxicating. She supposed Fred was feeling it too, but they had to stay focused on the mission. It was going to be a long, difficult next few weeks holed up here.

Veta shuffled a little closer to him, her arm pressing up against his. “Your timing is a bit off,” she whispered, shivering.

“I take my victories where I can get them.”

She raised a brow in the dark. “Oh, so this is a victory? I haven’t even said yes.”

He was silent for a moment. Once again, she lamented that she couldn’t see his face, and even considered flicking the lights back on to get a proper look at him. Although their back and forth was in jest, she could feel the tense undercurrent to their exchange. All she had to do was move closer and kiss him and they’d be—

She shut her eyes tight and swore silently to herself. Well, damn it. _That_ wasn’t supposed to be in her head, much less at the forefront where it could so easily materialise into a full thought. She could hardly deny the appeal of it when she considered it, though. It shocked her, but it didn’t disgust her, and _that_ shocked her even more.

“You’re the one who suggested we get in here,” he finally replied, but his voice had dropped to a whisper, too. She was close enough now that she could pick out the vague features of his face; the bright murky blue of his eyes most of all.

“So you think everyone who wants to huddle up close to you wants to sleep with you? That’s a little presumptuous.”

“Well,” he began, voice so quiet it was becoming difficult to hear him. “You’re the first person who’s offered.”

She tried to figure out how to respond to that, and a tense silence followed. He rolled onto his side, his broad shoulder sticking up into the dark and pulling the blankets with it. “Sorry—” he said immediately, shifting again, but she slipped a hand onto his arm to still him.

“It’s okay,” she whispered. “I’ll just move closer.”

She did move closer; as close as she dared, which was enough that she could press her face into his sweater if she were so inclined. Which she _was_ , but she kept that to herself. They were both rigid and still, not wanting to move away but too uncertain to move closer. She was absolutely _not_ relaxed, and sleeping this tensed up was asking for a nasty knot in her neck

“Goodnight, Fred,” she whispered instead, taking care not to press too many limbs into him.

“Goodnight, Inspector,” he replied, just as quiet and reserved.

“Veta,” she said again, smiling faintly.

“It’ll take a while.”

“I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” she said to the dark of the ceiling, shivering again.

“You’re still cold?”

“You’re not?”

“Not really.”

“Well you’ve got more real estate to help conserve body temperature,” she muttered.

“Actually, more surface area makes heat conservation _more_ difficult.”

“Wow. Flirty _and_ obnoxious,” she lamented, smiling and shaking her head. He chuckled instead of replying, and his breath blew softly onto her face. Veta grabbed onto his arm and hauled herself over the remaining distance between them, pressing into his broad frame and shivering violently at the temperature difference between her front and back. “Do all Spartans have built-in furnaces?” she asked, rubbing her hands between them.

“Just the lucky ones.” His arm looped over her shoulder tentatively, and when she didn’t protest, he relaxed the weight of it along her back. “Are all ONI agents made of ice?”

“Just the good ones,” she replied, the heat of his arm radiating up her back and finally _, finally_ , she was beginning to feel properly warm. The deep, even cycle of his breathing was a soothing tempo to rest her cheek against, enough that it made her temporarily forget that they were lying on a cold stone floor on a planet with no other living thing besides themselves.

Fred muttered something about her having to be very good at her job if she was that frosty, but it was too soft to hear above the whirr of the heater and the sound of him breathing. She clenched her fingers together and felt a small shudder run down her spine. Fred’s arm pulled her a little bit closer, and she felt his body curl around her. Her legs were cramped up by her chest, and her arms were folded awkwardly in between them, but she was warm and didn’t dare move.

“You warm enough?”

She smiled, though he couldn’t see it. “Yeah. You’re a much better space heater than that old thing.”

He chuckled at that, and she listened to the rhythmic inhale-exhale of his lungs through the thick material of his sweater. She had half a mind to slip her hands under his shirt, though that might be pushing it.

At least right now it would be. Her face tilted up to look at him, and she spoke before she had the sense to stop herself. “Fred?”

“Hm?” He sounded a little sleepy almost, but she saw his head move to look down at her in the dark.

She reached a gloved hand up to brush against his jaw.  “Can I kiss you?”

Silence. Then: “Yes,” came his answer. His voice no longer sounded calm; it was rough and low, with a ragged edge to it. “But I don’t know how,” he said, almost silently.

“Me neither,” she replied, and then stretched up to press her mouth to his. She felt his whole body tense up, then relax as she kissed him once, twice more, and then his arm tightened around her. She squirmed her other hand out from between them and cupped his face, lingering on the soft press of his lips before pulling away. “But it’s not so hard,” she whispered.

His forehead came to rest on hers, and he shifted to curl more tightly around the both of them. The long line of his nose jostled with her own, and she smiled as she heard him let out a ragged breath. “Again,” he murmured, sounding breathless.

She couldn’t agree more. He responded to the kiss this time, moulding his mouth over hers and using his free hand to touch her cheek. They were on the same pillow now, so close she could feel his heart beating against her own chest. Her hand found a home resting comfortably at the back of his head, and the touch made his whole body shudder. When he moved to do the same, however, she pulled back and shook her head.

“Wait,” she whispered. “Not there.” She guided his hand down to rest on her shoulder instead. “Much better.” Veta then reached her hand to her mouth and pulled one of her gloves off with her teeth.

“What are you—"

“I just want to touch your face,” she murmured. “I’ll put it back on after.”

Her fingers skimmed up his jaw and over his cheekbone. His skin was cool, and she immediately felt the cold of the room on her exposed hand. Her nails scraped back over the thick stubble on his head, and she felt the rumble of a groan in his chest. He pulled her tight to his body and pressed his face into her hair, shuddering again.

“You okay there?” she asked, half-joking. She was sort of trapped now, and with the amount of heat he was radiating, she could stand to even take her jacket off.

“Yeah,” he said, voice hoarse. She wiggled around, and he loosened his grip enough that she could pull back and look at him.

“Yeah?”

He leaned down to kiss her this time, and she could feel his whole body turn into towards her. Her reference for what a kiss was supposed to feel and taste like was more than a little outdated, but between the two of them they seemed to have gotten the gist of it. “Yeah,” he said again, mouth brushing hers. She laughed and finally did slip her now-ungloved hands under his sweater.

He flinched and shivered at the contact. “You’re _cold,”_ he complained, but he didn’t shove her hands away.

“And you’re warm,” she replied, running her hands up his sides. He shivered again, but she didn’t think it was because of her chilly fingers.

“So I wasn’t being presumptuous then.” He slid a hand of his own beneath his sweater and grabbed hers, squeezing her fingers to warm them. He still had his gloves on, but she could still feel the heat of his skin through the material. She never knew Spartans were so _warm._

“This hadn’t been the plan originally,” she confessed. “But the detour isn’t so bad.”

He huffed out a laugh. The heater pinged and groaned, stalling and then adjusting itself, resuming its stream of white noise and pitiful amounts of warm air. Otherwise it was quiet; she couldn’t even hear the wind outside, and it seemed far away anyway with her tucked up under the covers and rolled into a ball with Fred curled around her.

“It’s back to business as usual tomorrow,” she said into the material of his sweater. The warning was more to chastise herself than to remind him. _She_ was the one who’d started this.  “Can’t waste all of our time here making out. We’ve got pirates to kill.”

“Don’t worry, Inspector,” he said, his jaw moving over her hair. “If I stopped a mission to kiss every person I wanted, I’d be dead by now.”

“It’s Veta,” she said. “And you’ve wanted to kiss a lot of people?”

He paused before answering. “No,” he said. “Not that many.”

She didn’t know how to respond to that, so she resolved not to say anything. She fell asleep instead, listening to Fred breathing, but not before she felt him press his lips to her hair, so softly she may have dreamed it.

* * *

 

She’d forgotten to put her gloves back on, but they were somehow on her hands when she woke up. Fred wasn’t curled around her either, and she sat up with a violent shudder running down her spine. Veta blinked and squinted at the room. The tarp was still hanging up at the foot of their mattresses, and the space heater was still chugging away. She cleared her throat. “Fred?”

“In here, Inspector,” he called, and she could hear the kettle rumbling.

“Stop that,” she muttered, standing up and wincing as her joints cracked. Sleeping in a ball in the freezing cold hadn’t done her joints any favours. She rolled her neck and shoulders, stretching her legs out and flexing her hands and feet. The layers she had on made her feel sweaty and chilled at the same time, but the prospect of washing in the bathroom via the spigot made her groan. The Mill had more than prepared her for poor living conditions, but that didn’t mean she had to be happy about it.

“You know,” she began, pushing past the tarp and into the main room. There was at least a five-degree difference between their quarters and the rest of the safe house, and she rubbed her hands along her arms. “You’ll blow our cover if you don’t break that habit.”

Fred was standing to her left, facing the wall. He’d written out extensive notes with her holopen on the safe house wall, neatly organised and catalogued for easy reading. She recognised flight log activity, trade routes, personnel information on the cell leaders, and even small columns for his own personal lines of inquiry, all connected with thin, blue holographic lines. Veta knew Spartans were far from the dead-brained bullet catchers most people accused them of being, but she had to admit, she was impressed with his organisational and analytical skills. His handwriting was even nearer than hers.

Fred looked up and over his hunched shoulders at her, giving her a sly look. “I won’t even be able to use your first name when we go out scouting. You’re—” He looked down to his right, inspecting his writing off the wall. “Shanner,” he read off, looking back at her. His face was rosy from the cool air, and his features were the same neutral calm as ever. His eyes were warm though, with small crow’s feet pulling at their edges, and she remembered the night before with a thrill that she quickly tamped down.  “I’ll remember it when we’re active, Inspector, don’t worry.”

“O-kay, Eli,” she responded, frowning at how jarring the name sounded when she looked at him. “You should have a more intimidating fake name, anyway. You look nothing like an Eli.”

“So you think Fred is intimidating?”

She rolled her eyes. “Not really. Frederic is a little more mysterious.” Veta walked over to where the kettle was boiling and saw that he’d set out two cups for them, each with a chai tea bag sitting in the bottom. She poured out enough for each of them and passed him his cup, wrapping her hands around her own.

Fred nodded his thanks and turned to sit down in the centre, but not before she saw him grimace. Veta raised a brow. “What, you don’t like Frederic?”

“Not at all.”

“Why?”

“I prefer Fred.” He sat down on the floor instead of the chair so he could properly stretch his legs out, then pulled out his commpad again and read over the briefing as he sipped his tea.

She let him get away with the non-answer and sat in the chair beside him, reading over his shoulder. “What else have you got?”

“Not much, I don’t think,” he murmured, only half-paying attention. “Just seeing if I missed anything important.”

Veta looked back at his notes hanging on the wall. Writing them out with a holopen took a lot longer than simply projecting the file onto a flat surface, but they weren’t exactly strapped for time, and projecting drained the battery of the pad a lot faster.

“Did you put out the solar panels?” she asked, reminded of their power problem. Fred nodded.

“Sun’s up for sixteen hours today. Should be enough to keep us running for a while.”

“Good.” The panels were conscicuous and clunky, and as much as she hated their safe house, being found out by the pirates who landed in the quarry to do illegal trades wasn’t ideal. The less often they were exposed, the better.

“I also pumped out enough water for a wash, if you like. It’s in the bathroom.”

“Did you dust the rafters, too?”

He gave a lopsided smile. “Can’t do all your work for you, can I?”

She _psshed_ at him, then noticed he was clean-shaven as he looked up at her, making her wonder just how long he’d been up before her. She reached over to touch his jaw, not thinking, and he flinched away from her fingers. “Sorry,” she said immediately, retracting her hand, and he winced.

“It’s fine,” he said, sighing. “Not used to it yet.”

“You don’t have to be,” she replied. “Used to it, I mean. I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to.”

He didn’t answer her for a long moment, and even with the lights on again, she still had trouble reading his face.

“I do,” he murmured. “I just—” He set the commpad down on the table beside them and shrugged. “It’s just new.”

“Well, it is for me, too. So I get it.”

He gave her another crooked smile, his face pinker than the cold air would explain alone. “I do like kissing, though,” he mused.

She laughed. Setting her tea down for a moment, she bent over the arm of the chair and beckoned him closer. Fred rolled to his knees, nearly taller than her full height on them, and she sat back a little as he towered over her. Then she leaned in and pressed her mouth to his, soft and slow to allow him to pull back if he wanted. He settled his hands on her arms instead and pulled her close, reaching over the barrier of the armrest. She grabbed a hold of him to keep from tipping the chair over, and he responded by wrapping an arm around her shoulders. The warmth was a welcome contrast to the cold morning air, but she was having trouble breathing.

“You’re squishing me,” she whispered, and he pulled back.

“Sorry.”

She grinned. “I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it.”

“You’re kind of delicate,” he replied, shifting the chair so the armrest was out of the way.

“I absolutely am not—”

He kissed her, cutting off her protest, and she decided that she’d set him straight later. With the armrest no longer an issue, Fred moved closer, pulling her towards him but taking care not to flatten her against his chest this time. She snaked her arms around his neck and tickled the skin at the base of his head. He shivered again, and his breath hitched. “I like that too,” he whispered into her mouth.

“So I’ve noticed.” She kissed him once more and then pulled away, sighing. “But we really do need to do some work.”

His lips twitched. “I did a lot while you were sleeping.” Fred looked like he was considering leaning back into her, then stood up with a sigh and offered his hand. She hardly needed the support to stand up, but she took it anyway.

“Then catch me up, Lieutenant. I don’t have all day.”

“Technically,” he said, grin widening. “You do.”

“It’s not even been twenty-four hours and I already want to punch you,” she muttered, walking up to Fred’s wall. “That usually doesn’t happen this fast.”

“Occupational hazards,” he said with a shrug, but there was a gleam in his eye.

“Well, you can prevent one by telling me what you’ve found while writing all of this out.”

He laughed but did as she ordered. He let go of her hand as he began listing off the highlights of the dossiers and files they’d been sent, but every so often his shoulder would brush up with her arm or their hands would bump together when she pointed to the board. It sent a small thrill through her with each point of contact, and whenever she looked at Fred’s face, his usual calm, all-business expression was replaced with a small smile. Holing up in the side of a cliff for the next few months was not going to be pleasant, but she supposed there were much worse people to spend that time with.


End file.
